Call it a frighteningly mixed message. In the last week of January, the al-Qassam Cyber Fighters who had been claiming the Distributed Denial of Service takedowns of some of the nation’s largest financial institutions, turned their sights on credit unions.

The bland name hides the lethal intent of DDoS when aimed at financial institutions, an event that has become increasingly common as dozens of large banks have recently found their online operations crippled, sometimes for days by highly skilled cyber-attackers.